Share the wealth
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Surfer has been around a while. He’s well-known online under a variety of nicknames and has, he says, been an active member of the Mac underground for more than 12 years.
“I’ve had the distinction of affecting the direction file-sharing has taken in sometimes small ways, and in others, very significant ways,” he says, going on, “I’m now a highly paid software engineer, and my alleged sharing of files is only a hobby in an effort to Share the Wealth.”
File-sharing — “I refuse to call it piracy, as this is a misnomer and incorrect” — has been in existence since 1992, Surfer writes, going on »»»
It started on a component known as Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and began as an easy way for developers to exchange knowledge and information in a secure, reliable environment. I initially got into #irc to expand my hacking abilities by sharing information with other like minded individuals. During this time, hacking was possible, my interest was helping an organization known as ACPM, the Anti-Child Pornography Militia. At the time, it was widely prolific on the internet, and some of us refused to allow this content to exist. We would use our skills to physically destroy the hardware that provided this content. Unfortunately, they seem to be well funded, and would replace hardware rather quickly, which kept us very busy.
We delicately involved the FBI, and were told there was nothing they could do, even when we would hack in and get IRL (in real life) information, and turn this information over to the authorities. Because it was from ‘questionable’ sources, they said there was nothing they could do.
Then in late 1996, HotLine Communications, a joint Canadian/Australian company (Hotline) created one of the Internet’s best kept dirty little secrets.
Hotline is a file sharing and community building application composed of a client and a server application. The client lets you connect to thousands of active hotline servers across the world. The server application lets you set up your own Hotline community in a matter of minutes. Hotline is similar to Napster and many of the other peer-to-peer file sharing applications, but it encourages building a community through real-time chat and message boards as well as sharing files . A hotline server can be set up with its own theme and its own security with NO PROGRAMMING. Hotline is perfect for setting up a secure file sharing and chatting community for your friends, and included ‘trackers’ to find and connect to a variety of themed servers sharing files.
This software was the beginning of change: Adam Hinkley, the creator, envisioned a world of friends doing what friends do, share files. Back in the day, establishments like the RIAA actually promoted file-sharing. At the time, they thought it was a free way to promote their ‘content’. What better way to promote their newest ‘boy/girl’ band of product than a free environment that could lead to sales?
The problem was that they were very short-sighted in their campaign and did not realize that the digital age could supplant their money-grubbing existing scenario to feed the public the crap content they already knew was inferior. Hotline was a free. About this time I coined a phrase ‘Share The Wealth’. The concept was, ‘get what you need, contribute whatever you can’.
The philosophy began when we encountered issues with incredibly high priced software like Adobe Photoshop. How is a college student expected to learn and understand a complex piece of software when it is priced out of their reach? At the time, Photoshop was close to 700usd, not something you just buy to tinker with.
Enter the digital age. Hotline servers became specialized, music, movies, software, fonts, 3d software, desktop publishing programs, any and everything. If it was sold on CD or could be digitized, it was shared, even to include localized alternative versions of software for the international audience.
Other P2Ps emerged, mozilla, gnutella, kazaa, limewire, and haxial. These were used by the general populace, and not necessarily the hardcore crowd. The real ‘pirates,’ as we were starting to be called back then, have always, ALWAYS been ahead of the curve. We understood the need for obscurity, and anonymity, so we migrated to protocols that were not so public, and ones that afforded security. In several instances, we developed our own protocol and controlled its distribution and use. Several groups even adopted existing protocols that weren’t specifically designed for file-sharing, yet afforded this function.
There are protocols out there in use now that use AES256 encryption, so feel free to deep packet inspect that MediaSentry.
File-sharing was considered an extension of ‘first sale doctrine’. Once you purchase something, it’s yours to do what you wish with. Once you buy it it’s yours.
The recording industry had no problem with us recording songs on the radio to cassette tapes, and then dual cassette recorders emerged and we could make ‘mix tapes’. We could even convert vinyl records to cassette, and still this wasn’t considered copyright infringement.
This was the beginning of phase shifting, taking what you owned and converting it for multiple uses.
First sale doctrine, the RIAA could not agree to the notion, that if I buy it, I own it. And once I own it, I can put it on this computer or that computer, or any other music device that does digital.
Now they think that you should own multiple copies, one for this device, one for that.
I enjoyed reading the ‘handbag’ analogy where if you purchase a handbag, it can only be used with a particluar outfit. If you want to use the handbag with a different dress, you have to buy another handbag. And gawd forbid if you allowed your girlfriend to borrow the handbag!
If I buy a car, used or otherwise, I own it and can resell, distribute, give away, or dispense of said vehicle in my own manner of choosing. Makes sense, Yes? Well, the RIAA thinks that you cannot resell, copy, redistribute, or disseminate ‘their’ content.
‘Conspiracy to defraud the Music Industry’ is what they called it. Imagine that. The RIAA defrauds their artists, calling them ‘content providers’. Promoting CDs with 12-16 tracks where, if you’re lucky, more than one is interesting or marketable. They commercialize their content providers to pound out additional songs as filler, completely circumventing the artists’ creationism. Then they market a CD they think the public wants to hear, mainly slanted towards what will make profit, while ignoring music people really want.
Then on April 28, 2003 came iTunes, an incredible concept. Now you could skip the forced, unimaginitive content, and purchase just the quality.
This was a revelation for music lovers, and file-sharing gained serious momentum. People who tended to not really own a substantial amount of music now had access to a considerable amount of very diverse types of music. File-sharing was actually doing the music industry a favor. Exposure to a variety of music made a serious amount of new enthusiasts that would have not otherwise got involved in music. It has been proven time and time again that people that share files, buy more music that people that do not share files.
This is also around the time the RIAA lawsuits began. You don’t see Adobe suing its users for file-sharing, or Microsoft, or Apple. They have evolved their business models. You have been able to purchase and download all kinds of software on the internet for 8-10 years now, why is it so hard for the music industry to evolve?
I’ll explain why.
CD sales didn’t just dwindle, they were in free-fall. With the entrance of music recording/mixing/publishing software within everyone’s reach at reasonable prices, there was no real need to use a conglomerate that was only going to rape you and demand all the masters, and file copyrights in artists’ steads.
Indies popped up everywhere as a direct result of the exorbiant overhead the Gig 4 extorted for signing a new band. Still no evolution of the music industry. However with file-sharing, now millions of people can have access to a myriad of different kinds of music for free.
While the big 4 sat on their thumbs, file-sharing evolved into a massive network of diversity. Converting SSH files found on a CD to mp3 format eased the transferrence of files and with adequate quality for the average joe. I won’t mention current protocols to maintain anonymity of those using them, but there are several. In mp3 format, you can store several albums as data on one CD. I know servers that have and host, literally, millions of albums, some servers specialize in nothing but music and contain some of the largest collections known to man.
Back in the day, there was a Polish based server called KMPH, an abbreviate of something in Polish. This server had over 5tb of music available in mp3 format, and this was in 2001! I have seen other specialized servers that contain entire collections of famous artists, including live shows, bootlegs, and unpublished works. An absolute plethora in variety, and taste. The file-sharing community now has an almost instantaneous distribution network. Typically, a new release is available in days, if not hours. Sometimes you can find unreleased content even before the Big 4 roll it out.
File-sharing has evolved so far out of reach of the RIAA, it’s absolutely preposterous that they are suing a handful of people for what millions of others continue to do every single day. I got the Beatles’ Black Box entire collection the DAY it was for sale.
Consistently forcing DRM down consumers’ throats is only expediting the file-sharing philosophy. Why would I even bother to buy a DRM hobbled version of the Beatles’ Black Box, when I can get it thru the community, and then place it on any number of devices, including burning mp3s to a music CD for my vehicle?
Sony BMG distributed a DRM root-kit at one point, and who do you think found it, bypassed it, and brought it to the consumers attention at large? File-sharers.
We also monitor software for what we call the ‘phone-home’ syndrome. This is where a particular software package attempts to contact the authors across the internet during the validation process. Adobe does this very subtly, so does Apple with their operating system during boot up. Microsoft on the other hand, are not very subtle at all. I don’t touch on PC software during this article mainly because the circumvention of Microsoft products is so easy, I personally know of kids as young as 12 being able to work-around them.
If the music industry evolved during the digital age like so many other corporations have, there probably wouldn’t be such a prolific use of file-sharing technologiesS so thanks RIAA. Thanks a lot.
Think of us as the FaceBook underground, we do everything they do in a community envrionment, AND share files. One good example is Rosetta Stone. A really great language learning tool. The problem is that it is priced right out of this galaxy, and nigh impossible for the average internet user to afford. I have seen servers hosting their entire product line worth thousands of dollars. Do you see them suing their customers? No.
If I buy content, then I own it, and can do whatever I want with it, share with friends, give it to family member.
A section of the ‘making available’ first sale doctrine allows me to do whatever I want with this ‘content’. I paid for it, it’s not yours anymore. So the RIAA cry, complain, whine, and lobby, swearing that file-sharing is crippling their antiquated ways, and all of the sudden, Intellectual Property infringement is paramount, above and beyond rape, murder or even armed robbery.
Who do they convince? Congress, that’s the answer, lobby, money, lobby, more money, finally gets their agenda ratified. but does this discourage file-sharing? Hell no, whats free is free, and your business model of a CD full of crap for only one quality song is so 80’s. The RIAA continuously thinks that their draconian tactics are still the only way to make it big as a musician, this has not been the case for about 5 years now.
Nine Inch Nails experimented with digital distribution by offering a new CD online for free, with a caveat that if you wanted to pay, then pay whatever you want to. First, this prompted a lawsuit from their label because they were totally cut out of the loop for the revenue, it went directly to the artists. Another glaring fact of that experiment was that the average purchase price for the album was higher than the price of the average CD, somewhere in the neighborhood of 26usd. So instead of NIN getting .36 cents per sale, while the RIAA got 75% of the profit, and the label 22%, and artist somewhere in the neighborhood of 3%, they got 26 dollars, all 100%. Of course it was downplayed, and the mainstream media made little mention of this, of course while being strong armed by the RIAA. This is a perfect example of a digital distribution business model THAT WORKS.
Daily exposure of real news on the internet, and not the politically correct filtered diatribe of mainstream media, is increasingly educating internet users that file-sharing is good, and paying the RIAA for overpriced garbage is bad. Keep up the good work RIAA, for every paying customer you lose, I get another member and a whole new library of music.
There are approximately 50 million internet users that share files. How many customers do you have left RIAA? Certainly not as many as I do. Feel free to keep pushing them my way because I have zero fear of your ’sue ‘em all’ campaign. The government couldn’t find WMD’s in Iraq, you CERTAINLY are never going to find me, much less the other 49,999,999 internet users that continue to share files, every, single, day.
Oh, kewl, got a request from a user to invite his buddy to join, who happens to have every album the Grateful Dead ever published. Thanks RIAA !
It’s absolutely amazing how stupid the RIAA are concerning the scope of their dilemma. Ignorance must be bliss, and if the EFF is correct, I see the dissolusion of the RIAA in under three years, hopefully sooner rather than later.
Out of 34,235 extended lawsuits, the RIAA has won 0. That’s zero, null, nil, nyet, nada, cero.
It’s blatently obvious that their ’sue ‘em all’ tactics is one expensive study on how to accelerate your own demise.
People are starting to realize all they have to do is stand up and say ‘NO’ to the extortionistic regime of the RIAA, and all of a sudden, justice is on their side and the RIAA gets yet another thorn of reality in its side.
I can’t WAIT for the outcome of Joel Tenenbaum vs the RIAA. Maybe I should contact him and see if he needs another source of music other than kazaa. ?
Even @ 200usd/song for an innocent infringement violation, I am currently at an alleged, estimated 112,341,400,000usd and counting (that’s billion),
How do you like me now RIAA?
Stay tuned for more ……
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November 10th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Thanks Jon.
November 10th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
And so it is, what I have always said, “The RIAA is the worst method the majors could ever have dreamed up to represent them”.
The whole industry is a vampire relationship where everyone else pays in blood for what little they get. No one that deals with the majors gets a fair shake. Not the musicians, not the customer, not the manufacture of the discs, not the middlemen that move the product, and not the sites that offer such product on line for sale.
Everyone gets screwed to deal with the majors is the theme. Can it be any wonder that it has turned out the way it has?
Even payolla is alive and well. Remember the agreement that was achieved to end payolla by the ex-attorney general Elliot Spitzer? The agreement to end payolla, to allow indies part of the broadcast time, etc? It is evident on the face of it, they signed a deal they had no intention of honoring and paid up the money. Nothing has changed on the broadcast side. Radio land is still a wasteland of boring replays with nothing new to hear that might interest you in something…anything… other than the sponsored themes.
Again, the money speaks louder than words and the public is the loser in it.
I joined file sharing when Napster was going south under the gun from the majors siccing the RIAA on them with a lawsuit that eventually wound up closing them down. Shortly after that, the sharing place I was at closed as well from the same method.
I found when it had, being a new online user, I stupidly searched for mp3 sites where I could go to continue. That search was loaded with sites just waiting to catch the unsuspecting with malware and boy did they load me up with it in the process. I finally found what I was looking for, a format later and a bit wiser.
I won’t forgive the industry the pain in the butts they have caused with malware, purposely seeded on the net by their hired third parties, while at the same time, seeding the same sites with tunes to find out if they are commercially viable or seeking data on how it will sell without putting out the money to advertise. They have wanted their cake both to eat and to enjoy the visual stimulation at the same time.
I now find it humorous that they are seeking to nail the first distributors who come out with the offers prior to them being on the market, yet that is exactly what they were doing with p2p in finding out if a tune had market value.
Oink had such insiders in the music industry that gave music that were insider samples and demos not to be sold but rather to be passed around to see if there was financial interest. So they went after them, hot and heavy. Yet you can be sure they were up to their eyeballs with part of that early distribution to run surveys on the sales possibilities.
Thank you for this article, surfer. Much of what you mention is before my time or outside my experience. So I found it interesting.
November 10th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
agree. do add more: riaa is like jail guard punishing prisoners (us citizens) on behalf of jail food and dress supplier.
November 10th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Surfer on File-sharing â âI refuse to call it piracy, as this is a misnomer and incorrectâ
Thank you.
I have pretty much made myself a pariah around here trying to say that.
November 10th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
^^ Itâs been said many times here, and elsewhere, by a lot of people, including me. Youâre no pariah.
November 10th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
the primary purpose for this article was to shed some light on the situation the RIAA ‘allegeses’ exists concerning file-sharing, and the actual reality of the situation. Their own actions have only improved the community that shares, and if they think that easy pickings like kazaa are ‘it’, then I am overjoyed at their ignorance.
they think that suing customers is a deterrent, its quite the opposite, for every customer they piss off, they make 10x more customers that turn to file-sharing. this is the law of averages. make something illegal and only criminals will do it. except the criminal behavior is only in their little minds.
30,000 lawsuits and counting, these hyenas only go after easy prey and they know it. the ‘power file-sharers’ are so far out of their reach, they think that intimidating the small amount of users they can get to will sway us? … it’s never going to happen. their tactics only improve our community.
I read a few articles under interviews today and was impressed. I am not the only one out there with this kind of experience and history. and their tirades are only comedic relief, they have absolutely no clue. They are only educating the uneducated on how to file-share more effectively, and to stay away from things like kazaa.
my world is international, with such a deep base of talented folk, they have a better chance of inventing warp drive than catching anyone of us. we build our own protocols, interfaces, trackers, mail servers, exchange routines and even encryption. Microsoft has around 1000 developers, we have millions. we are organized and have a cause, to do exactly what they DONT want us to do, hack their garbage, and then distribute it, and then brag, privately of course.
Spore was exceptionally satisfying, they roll out the best they got, and we hacked it in days. Face it, corporations have less than 1% of the world’s talent, the file-sharing world has close to 20%. Sh*t, make it harder, cmon Sony, AACS was hacked in days, FairPlay in hours. Give us a real challenge. Of course, this will never happen.
The reality is that they cannot come up with anything we cant hack. They spend millions of usd/eus to come up with the ‘next big thing’., and we hack it for 0 usd/eus, its a game to us and they will NEVER win, they dont even know the rules. we hacked their website, and it went unnotticed for months, just shows you how ‘in’ they really are. how ‘in touch’ with what is REALLY going on.
They are children playing in an adult world, it will always be this way, it will never change.
November 10th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
and thanks for your responses, Jon has allowed me to contribute more articles in the future.
so for your reading pleasure, as Jon says, .. stay tuned..
November 10th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
Surfer, great article. I loved every line of it. I have to take you up on “The reality is that they cannot come up with anything we cant hack” offer. I am on DSL in Canada where torrents are throttled by Bell – even though I buy my internet from another company. In reality bell throttles at the wholesale level. Cable is out of question. When you talk about encryption and how it defeats DPI is not that simple. When the DPI encounters the encrypted packets it automatically throttles them. I tries torrent protocol encryption, SSL tunnelling, VPN etc – nothing works. Some guys say that MLPPP might work, but I don’t want to buy a specific model of router, then patch it and have two internet connections to go around the stuff.
How do you see throttling defeated by the P2P community? Thank you.
November 10th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
throttling is been proven illegal by FCC, unsure if this washes over to CRIA but that is beside the point.
to begin with, an easy argument is that you have a sensitive job, and start encrypting everything you transfer. there are several free apps that will encrypt every packet you send/receive. complain you are being throttled without cause, and with enough support (read legal help) they will be forced to relent. throttling encryption is a ‘catch-all’, like alot of the RIAA’s angles. ‘If your encrypting, then you must be doing something illegal.’ is NOT legal, for any country. They do this in response to your encryption, cause they cant DPI it. Can you say asshat?.
my second suggestion is to get an account above ‘consumer’, like a ‘business-like’ level of service, where they will be legally binded to provide you with unthrottled access. Business level service is restricted by much more stringent regulations. (read lawsuits).
There are several other ‘proxy’ approaches to confusing their ‘automation’. To begin with, use your router to block ALL UDP traffic, and they will be contacting you shortly
. blocking all UDP disallows them to talk to your router, and then throttle it. blocking UDP will also piss them off, (read I love it!), and is part of the protocol on how they assign you an available dynamic IP. if you block UDP, they cannot reset your IP, or review your packets at the router level, which is where they are throttling you.
quick fix, is to reset the router periodically to gain a new IP (if dynamic) and the throttling will have to resniff and restart.
November 11th, 2008 at 12:04 am
and FYI, DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) is a fool’s term. It’s just called packet sniffing (and considered illegal if I did it), and we have been doing this for years now. In each packet is a header and footer that tells the computer how to put the pieces back together again, in the header is the filename.
Believe me the RIAA surfs the torrents more than a hundred users combined in attempts to update their database of ‘violating’ content. an’ admin’ used to run a hotline server where the rules were ‘out of this world’. zip file, rename file, upload file, rename uploaded file, unzip. This was an easy way to bypass sniffing for packet headers and worked, this was in 1999
hth
November 11th, 2008 at 8:33 am
I am pretty sure this is just satire but incredibly funny..
RIAA Bans Telling Friends About Songs
@Angela: It’s nice to know that the demand for secure encrypted file-sharing continues to spur business models to create nice tools like your NomaDesk, kudos and keep it up. I didn’t play with it, but your point is clear, very clear. There are many, many, many uses for file-sharing protocols that have absolutely nothing to do with a ‘Conspiracy to defraud the Music Industry’. ( That tag line just kills me
)
It’s very sad that the RIAA goes after internet users that really don’t know any better. Many of the kazaa lawsuits are against users that didn’t even realize their folder is shared for others to view.
November 11th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Mark Russinovich is responsible for uncovering the sony rootkit, other then that i enjoyed your article. thanks
November 11th, 2008 at 11:01 am
Quote: “If I buy a car, used or otherwise, I own it and can resell, distribute, give away, or dispense of said vehicle in my own manner of choosing. Makes sense, Yes? Well, the RIAA thinks that you cannot resell, copy, redistribute, or disseminate âtheirâ content.”
The essential difference between both examples is the word “copy” that appears in the latter but not in the first.
November 11th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
excellent article. thanks surfer
i like the analogy of the car and the handbag. i agree completely. once i buy it, i can do with it what i like. poo on u riaa and cria
peace
11/11 lest we forget
November 19th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Well put Surfer. Myself being a part of the scene for quite some time have reflected as to what motivates people and on a larger scale, organizations. It’s true that when there is marketing regardless the technique, there will be exposure for an artist/producer/etc. This is a concept that is known by mainstream organizations and they generally will use conventional means of this, primarily advertising. But with the ghettogeeks.com camp we also know that word of mouth hasn’t cost it anything, because people in the end will decide where their “voting dollar” ballot is casted. It’s good to see that I am not the only who see the beauty in enlightenment of other people and how awesome it is to recreate society in a positive and altruistically purposeful direction. Keep up the good work, and as in the title “Share the Wealth”